Happy Hour at the Kerala State Liquor Distribution Center

A collective of conservative Muslim organizations in Kerala recently launched a ‘Quit Drinking for the New Year’s’ campaign. In an effort to apparently spread prohibitory cheer to the masses, the organizations said that over the next few weeks they will be ‘recruiting youth’ to go out and ‘educate’ people on the ills of alcohol. That promise sounds vaguely fascistic.

However, I guess the 100 or so men at the Kerala State Liquor Distribution Center on Friday night had not been ‘educated’ by any ‘youths’. Neither had I, for that matter.

I had come to the so-called ‘Beverage Shop’ to by a beer. It was Friday night, after all, and neither Jenna nor I had had a drop of alcohol pass our lips in nearly two weeks. On my way out of our apartment, Jaime had also requested a Kingfisher. “If you can find any,” she said, which was always a reasonable qualifier when searching for alcohol in Tirur.

I told my rickshaw driver, “Beverage shop, please,” and a wicked smile parted his lips. “Liquor!” he replied, chuckling and tipping his head back as he pointed his thumb downwards at his mouth—the universal sign for getting drunk.

“Uh, yeah. Liquor,” I said. I already felt squalid. The feeling only would get worse.

After a five-minute ride past Tirur’s busy central bus stand and through its main market, we came upon a poorly lit road lined with idling rickshaws and haphazardly parked scooters and motorcycles. The driver pulled to the side onto the gravel curb and I alighted upon a scene more reminiscent of a stock exchange than a bar.

More than 100 men—in varying stages of excitement and inebriation—clamored at a storefront of iron gates that had the appearance of Depression-era bank teller windows. Two sinuous lines of men snaked around opposite sides of the storefront while a wild melee of more men pushed and caromed around in the center. Frequently, men would stumble out of the scrum carrying full bottles of amber booze—beer, rum, brandy, and whiskey. They would stuff the bottles in their dhotis under their shirts or simply open the bottles right then and there and begin partaking sans chasers. Muddied pieces of paper littered the ground: receipts, stamped by what must have been the Official Alcohol Distributor of Kerala (or some other curiously named public peon).

Reluctantly, I got in line. My rickshaw driver had already departed, laughing maniacally as he pulled away from the curb. I felt like an explorer who spends his life searching for a long lost tribe of natives and then suddenly one day in the jungle finds himself captive in a pot of boiling cannibal stew. Be careful what you wish for, the words inexplicably kept popping into my head.

Maybe the “Quit Drinking” campaigners were on to something.

Even in selling hooch, India is maddeningly bureaucratic. I was standing in a line to make my order—a process that ended up taking slightly more than half an hour. Once I ordered and received a receipt, then I would have to elbow and gouge my way to another window, somehow scrounge through the mosh pit to give my receipt to another teller, who looked over my receipt, stamped it, and then retrieved the bottles from stacks of cardboard boxes in a back room.

Once I ordered and made my way, pushing and clawing, to the second window, I realized why I had seen so many men with duffle bags. The Kerala State Liquor Distribution Center, either through lack of funds or through the twisted logic of public shaming, did not give out brown paper bags with their alcohol. Customers took to stuffing bottles five-at-a-time into their gym bags or their backpacks, so as to conceal their unhealthy habits from the upright citizenry of Tirur or, more likely, from packs of youths bent on education. Meanwhile, I was stuck with carrying a bottle of Kingfisher and a plastic handle of Old Cask rum in nothing but my sweaty hands.

In a final bureaucratic flourish, a convenience store sold mixers and soda in the stall next to the liquor distributor. I bought a Pepsi and took a clear plastic bag and placed all my purchases inside. Better than nothing, I thought. If I met any ‘educating youth’ on the way home, I would explain that the alcohol was for a friend. A very sick friend, who for some reason, felt he needed a drink on a Friday night.